In the latter half of the twentieth century, there began a phenomenon known as the information revolution. While the information revolution is a historical development broader in scope than any one event or machine, no single device has come to represent the information revolution more than the digital electronic computer. The development of computer systems has surely been a revolution. Each year, computer systems grow faster, store more data, and provide more applications to their users.
The declining prices and expanding capabilities of modern digital technology has caused it to be used in an ever increasing variety of applications. One of these applications has been the capturing of optical images. Optical imaging technology generally uses a digital sensor array, such as a charge-coupled device (CCD) array, having a large number of photo-sensitive elements arranged in a regular pattern, and appropriate supporting hardware which scans the output of the elements and constructs therefrom a digital image. The digital image can then be stored in any digital data storage medium, displayed on a digital display device, printed on paper or other medium, manipulated using editing tools, or transmitted to remote locations using any transmission medium appropriate for digital data.
Optical imaging has been used in a variety of settings, including fax machines, document scanners, bar code readers, and so forth. In particular, digital optical imaging is also used as a substitute for older film-based media in high-resolution still and motion picture cameras. Indeed, as digital optical technology improves in quality and declines in price, many foresee the day when it will completely supplant the older film-based media in these fields.
A digital camera, whether still or motion video, typically contains an on-board processor, which can be programmed to perform a variety of functions. Among other things, the processor can be programmed to embed supplementary information in the digital image. It is known, for example, to embed a date and time at which the image was captured. Date and time is easily established by maintaining an on-board digital clock in the camera. Embedding such supplementary information is not particularly difficult once it is obtained.
Most digital cameras to date have simply tried to mimic the capabilities of their mechanical device counterparts, making limited use of digital technologies other than simple optical scanning and recording. Such an approach fails to recognize the vast potential of the information age to provide improved integration of digital technology and enhanced function of digital cameras not yet conceived, a potential which is bounded only by human imagination.
One area in which conventional digital cameras and other devices fail to live up to their potential is in the management of multiple captured digital images. Modern digital cameras are capable of storing multiple images on digital media, such as compact flash cards. The convenience and low cost of digital photography encourages users to capture and accumulate a large number of such images. Often, a user will take multiple successive images of the same subject in order to assure that at least one good image is captured, or to record successive stages of an unfolding event. The proliferation of such images makes their organization and management difficult.
In older film-based cameras, photographs are usually individually printed on paper, and the user may optionally arrange the printed photographs in some form of book or other holding device. The same option exists with digital photographs. However, because most users capture a large number of digital images, such images are often kept in digital storage displayable only with a digital device, without being printed on paper.
When a large number of digital images are maintained in a digital storage medium, it often becomes difficult to conveniently view selective images or images in a desired order. When captured, images are normally stored in digital storage media in a sequential order for presentation. This means that, when presenting the digital images from digital storage media, the user must view them in sequential order. The user may have to view a large number of images which are duplicative or otherwise of little interest to find one or a relatively smaller number of images of interest.
It is possible to download such images to a digital computer or other device, and to edit the images for presentation in any desired order using any of various conventional digital image management programs. However, downloading and arrangement of a large number of digital images using such software is very time consuming. As a result, many users do not select and arrange their stored images in a logical presentation order. Instead, such users may simply accumulate images in one or more digital storage devices.
A need therefore exists, not necessarily recognized, for improved devices or techniques for managing and presenting multiple digital optical images captured by a digital camera or similar apparatus.